WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Classical Context: Valencia, Caroline Shaw

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Leaping forward in time, Caroline Shaw’s Valencia quartet pushes boundaries in our modern age…

Hello, I'm your host, Peter Andrews, and you're listening to Classical Context on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. Today we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to stand back and have you listen to a longer excerpt of music from five-time Grammy- Award-winning composer Caroline Shaw's string quartet called Valencia, and then talk afterward about the piece. Here's the opening to Valencia. Valencia demonstrates Carolyn Shaw's skill in blending classical string writing with experiment. technical techniques. The piece features intricate textual layers using extended techniques like con leno, zlponticello, and harmonics to create a rich sound palette. Shaw manipulates silence and space, shaping the piece with shifting meters and temporal disjunctions,

allowing for an elastic sense of time. The quartet moves between delicate fragile passages and more forceful polyrhythmic sections, while exploring non-traditional tonality with modal and microtonal elements. Overall, the work pushes the boundaries of the string quartet form while maintaining a striking cohesion and lyricism. I highly recommend you sit down and listen to the entirety of this piece. My personal favorite recording is from the Ataka String Quartet, available wherever you listen to music.

I'm your host, Peter Andrews, and I'll see you next time, right here on Classical Context on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.